Illustration by Edward Shuman
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In a morning as bright and fair as the one that greeted Beauty and Serenity when they awoke, surely no such thing as a terrible monstrous Beast could possibly exist. How Serenity laughed when she found that Beauty was cocooned all the way down at the foot of her mattress, with the coverlet and all the pillows barricading her from the outside world! Beauty tried to explain what she had seen the night before, but in the morning light and facing the disbelief of her sister, who had slept through the whole affair, she was forced to concede that it might have been a dream. As for the bolted window and door, well, perhaps she had been sleepwalking. It was difficult to remember her terror of the night before when the hands were bringing in a tempting breakfast and selecting dresses for them. (Their own clothes had been carefully cleaned and put away, but it seemed somehow inappropriate to wear linen smocks and homespun skirts while they were surrounded by such magnificence.)

That morning also began their tour of the castle. As they wandered through more drawing rooms and morning rooms and sitting rooms and ballrooms and bedrooms and banquet rooms and dressing rooms, Beauty and Serenity found everything in a perfect state of readiness -- but for what, or for whom? Rooms that were apt to be damp had cheery fires burning in the grates; rooms that might have been chilly had thick tapestries (woven with scenes of hunting or harvest) lining the walls to block any draughts that were impertinent enough to try to enter; any interior rooms that threatened to be gloomy had intricate candelabra, filled with wax candles, set in the most convenient places to cast light; and there was not a speck of dust or a shred of cobweb to be seen.

Every metallic or glassy surface was polished to a mirror brightness, and every bit of wooden furniture possessed an equal luster (the well-waxed surfaces somehow never smudged when touched). Everywhere were fresh flowers, looking as if they had just been brought from the garden or hothouse: a cluster of violets in a crystal vase on a side table, or a single water lily floating in a porcelain bowl of matching translucence and whiteness for a centerpiece on a dining table, or tall irises in a floor stand whose lapis lazuli inlay precisely matched the petals. If it were not for the eerie silence that pervaded everything, the girls would have expected to meet crowds of people around every corner; but all they met was more hands, still busy with their chores.

One of the most interesting rooms they found was a portrait gallery, whose pictures chronicled the long line of kings, queens, princes, and princesses that had ruled from Castle Lochlein. Beauty and Serenity were very much amused by the older portraits. "Keeping one's chin up" must have been more than a platitude for the men wearing those awful starched ruffles around their necks, and for one period the degree of a gentleman's nobility seemed determined by the width of his hat brim and the number of plumes he wore! It was a wonder the women managed to move at all: some of them were wearing enormously wide hoops and crinolines under their skirts, and others had skirts so narrow they would hardly be able to walk. The fashion for ridiculously high-heeled shoes seemed to disappear for everyone after the men were forced to wear them for a time, and thankfully women were no longer expected to pluck their hairlines and eyebrows so viciously!

The last two paintings held their attention the longest, as much for the quality of the artwork as for the differences between the subjects. The first was a young princess, of about sixteen or eighteen years, wearing a rose-colored gown, and shown seated on the edge of a marble fountain. She was smiling and laughing as she attempted to coax a jewel-bright butterfly to land on her finger. With the sunlight glancing off the golden circlet in her flaxen hair and the happy sparkle in her eyes, which the artist had captured with unparalleled skill, she was the very image of delighted innocence.

The next picture was composed much more formally, and its subject was an imposingly handsome man of decidedly royal mien -- presumably the current King of Lochlein, since it was the last portrait in the gallery. His dark hair was confined by his ornate golden crown, and his amber eyes gazed out from the canvas quite soberly. Very little could be seen of his figure, draped as it was in heavy ceremonial robes, but he seemed to have the form and stature to match the nobility of his face. Standing behind the King to his right, offering him a golden chalice, was another man. Although he was clearly not the main focus of the picture and even stood slightly in shadow, there was no denying his presence. His garments were nearly as fine as the King's, dyed in rich colors and with fur at the collar, and across his broad shoulders hung the chain of some high office. The light painted into the scene drew auburn highlights from his hair, and the artist had drawn an unmistakable look of mischief in his brown eyes.

"He's very handsome, isn't he?" Serenity said, looking at the painting of the King.

"Yes," Beauty answered, "but he's not about to let you forget who is ruler and who is not, is he? I should imagine he's very proud."

"But he's the King, so I suppose he of all people must have a right to be proud. His companion looks rather more amiable."

"And hardly trustworthy to be so near the King! His expression makes me wonder what he has hidden at the bottom of that goblet -- a tadpole, perhaps?" They both laughed at the idea that someone might dare to play such a joke on the very solemn King. "Now she," Beauty said, pointing at the Princess's portrait, "looks more like someone I should be glad to know. The friendship of a person with such a joyful soul would be a treasure indeed."

"Yes, but how likely would it be for two woodcutter's daughters to be granted the privilege of friendship with royalty?" Serenity asked with a sigh.

Beauty had to concede the truth of her sister's words, and with that they left the gallery. However, Beauty could not entirely banish the portraits from her thoughts. She told herself it was because she wanted to find the garden in which the Princess had been painted, which was likely the same one they could see from their rooms, and not because she was still thinking about the handsome King.

When the sisters finally found a passage leading to the central courtyard and emerged into the sunshine, Beauty felt sure that what she had seen the night before must have been a dream, because the garden seemed far more beautiful than she remembered it. But if it was a dream, how could she have imagined it so clearly? For there in the far corner were the kitchen herbs, smelling of rosemary, mint, and thyme; and over there were the honeysuckle and jasmine, with golden bees darting between the flowers; and the surrounding walls, as she had hoped, were covered in roses of every perfect hue.

What she did not recall, as she spied an unusual flash of color, was that solitary flower, all alone near one of the walls; but then, in her dream -- if it was a dream -- that was the wall against which the Beast had been standing, so her view of it had been obstructed. The flower was unlike anything she had ever seen: a beautiful golden lily. However, whoever planted it must have been very careless, for it was in a place where it would receive far too much sun than such delicate flowers usually required; indeed, it was drooping rather sadly. Beauty called Serenity to her, knowing she would also be delighted with the pretty plant, and they had just knelt down to feel whether the ground below it was too dry, when both girls were stunned by an awesome roar.

Charging towards them through one of the archways was the Beast! After an instant of terrified immobility, the sisters promptly picked up their skirts and fled in the opposite direction. Fear lent them speed, and they had soon left the garden far behind. Keeping tight hold of each other's hand, they darted through doorways and up stairs at random, their only thought to put distance between themselves and the hideous monster.

Now you will notice that the King -- or rather, the Beast -- had managed to disappear from my tale again, and as before I'm sure you are wondering what he has been doing. Once the initial shock of having been enchanted wore off, his foremost thought was that, Beast or not, he had a castle to maintain, a kingdom to run, and subjects to rule. Those were his royal duties, and the importance of carrying them out had been drummed into him from a very young age, so he wasn't going to let any pesky little illusion get in their way. However, he soon discovered (once he paid some attention to it) that he actually had very little to do with maintaining the castle; the servants took care of everything! Running the kingdom alone might have proved difficult, especially without Counselor Gallant, but instead it was tremendously easy because there was no one to rule: almost all of his subjects had run away or were staying shut up indoors for fear of the mighty Beast that had supposedly invaded the castle.

With these usual kingly pursuits denied to him, the King spent some time in the library, poring through his vast collection of books in the hope that he might find a few clues about breaking the spell. He brought out dusty old tomes and scrolls that hadn't seen the light of day in several generations, but nowhere did he find any mention of the kind of magic that enveloped the castle. It was just as well that the King was all alone, because he never considered how odd it would be for someone passing by to see a black-furred, wolf-headed, bull-horned, boar-tusked, bear-pawed, lion-tailed Beast sitting in one of the library's comfortable armchairs, paging through an ancient illuminated manuscript. (Actually, the King quite often forgot that he looked like a Beast to everyone but himself. With his sister transformed, his counselor vanished, his servants invisible, and his subjects fled, there was no one to remind him, "Sire, you're a Beast.")

When he became bored with his fruitless attempts at research (since he was in any case a King who preferred action to study), he formulated a grand scheme to pursue the wizard over land and sea, battle him until the very mountains shook on their foundations, bind him in heavy iron chains, and then force him to undo the spells on the castle. However, the first snag in this plan was the fact that the wizard would be unable to counteract the effects of the magic orb. The King didn't know this, of course, since he had no idea the wizard had stolen the orb, but he probably wouldn't care if he did know. He would likely just bind the wizard in heavier chains or put him on a diet of bread and water in the deepest, darkest dungeon of Castle Lochlein until he thought of some way to reverse the spell.

A more serious problem turned out to be the King's lack of transportation. Although the groomsmen-hands and the coachmen-hands were perfectly capable of doing their jobs to prepare a horse or a coach for the King to use, the animals would have none of it. The horses only saw a Beast, and they would never let it come close enough to enter a coach or, even worse, mount into a saddle. After two episodes in which the King's favorite black stallion reduced the wood of its stall door to splinters with an emphatic and well-placed hoof, everyone was finally convinced that the horses were sincere in their refusal to cooperate.

These events left the King terribly frustrated -- after all, he was the most powerful ruler in seven kingdoms, and he was ordinarily used to doing exactly as he pleased, whenever he cared to do it -- or ordering someone else (usually Counselor Gallant) to do it if he couldn't be bothered. In short, from having advisors and nobles and servants scurry to carry out his every whim, he had become a little spoiled. Being snubbed by his favorite horse was simply the last straw.

His only comfort each day was the time that he spent in the garden, when he would lean against the wall and talk to the lovely flower that was his sister, telling her everything about his attempts to break the spell, encouraging her not to give up hope, and sharing with her his fears about the fate of Counselor Gallant, of whom there was still no sign. He imagined that the golden lily responded to his presence, standing a little straighter or turning slightly towards him as he took up his usual position by the wall.

If the King had been protective of his sister before she was enchanted (you will recall that she was described in local gossip as the treasure the King kept locked away within the castle, which is the rumor that started this whole mess), he was even more careful of her welfare now. He had forbidden any of the servants to enter the garden, for fear that one of them might mistakenly cut her down and put her in a flower arrangement in the banquet hall. He also kept a watchful eye on the crows, ravens, and magpies that still perched on the castle roof, to ensure that none of them flew down to peck at the flower -- even if they were now birds, they were still spiteful creatures, and who knew what revenge they might take to punish him for not selecting a wife from among them before they were all given beaks and feathers? Despite his care, the lily looked a little more distressed every day, and the King became concerned that his sister was giving in to despair. He redoubled his efforts to console her, assuring her that he would find a way to restore her human form. The idea that he should water the flower never crossed his mind -- after all, he was a King, not a gardener.

When Beauty and Serenity arrived at the castle, the King spared a thought for them, but very little more. He imagined only that they were two more women come to present themselves as prospective brides, so he instructed the servants to greet them in the usual way. (That accounts for the opulence of the welcome the woodcutter's daughters received. The servants had learned the hard way that if the princesses, duchesses, marquesas, countesses, baronesses, and other assorted noblewomen who previously came to the castle were given anything less, they would raise a ruckus the likes of which you've never seen.)

Although he expected nothing more than that they would each make the usual adequate curtsey before the throne and twitter something about how handsome he was and how splendid his kingdom was, the King allowed himself to feel a slight anticipation for meeting these two women that he had not felt for any of the others. They might turn out to be cunning and mercenary shrews, who were encouraged by the knowledge that all of their competitors were now birds, and whose desire for a rich husband was not at all dampened by the King's Beastly looks -- in which case it might be entertaining to put them in their place. Or they might turn out to be powerful enchantresses who had come to undo the spell and thereby render a service to the benevolent King of Lochlein, hoping to receive a suitable reward -- in which case one of them might possibly be worthy enough to be his Queen. Needless to say, the King never considered that there could be any other reason for their arrival, and he never suspected that they were only the daughters of a common woodcutter.

Therefore, on the morning that Beauty and Serenity were starting their exploration of Castle Lochlein, the King was in the throne room, practicing both scathing retorts (delivered with one arm majestically but unequivocally pointing toward the exit) and royal welcomes (accomplished with an imperial yet gracious wave of one hand), since there was no telling which the women would deserve. He was also becoming more and more annoyed as time passed and they did not appear. Surely every lady who came to Castle Lochlein knew that it was her duty to present herself before the throne? It would never do for the King to seek them out, but being a King he also could not give in to impatience, so he determined that he should wait a little longer; and to calm himself he turned towards the archway which led to the castle garden, hoping that the sight of its loveliness would soothe him.

He was very surprised to see that his two guests were in the garden -- how could they possibly be interested in plants and flowers, when he was giving them an opportunity to meet the King? Really, he ought to have sent a servant to summon them into his presence! (This had not been necessary before, since every lady who came to the castle knew almost by instinct where she should go. The trick at times had been to keep from having too many women in the throne room at once, all of them practically falling over each other to display themselves before the King.) However, perhaps these two had come from father away than usual and did not know the customs of the castle. Well, they were sure to come before the throne in a moment, and in the meantime he could admire the pretty picture they made: the bright hues of their gowns, their slender lissome figures, and the contrast of one lady's chestnut hair with the other's golden hair as they bent down to more closely examine one of the unusual flowers...The King felt his heart stop. It looked as if they meant to uproot the golden lily that was Princess Graceful!

The King reacted entirely without thinking, running into the garden and shouting, "No! Don't touch her!" However, he did not anticipate how much more intimidating the Beast-illusion would make him seem, with a ferocious roar under his words and his horns and tusks glinting cruelly in the sunlight. He didn't care how Beauty and Serenity responded, nor did he concern himself with what they might be thinking as they ran away. All that mattered was that Princess Graceful was safe.

After he had calmed down and could see that the golden lily was unharmed, his royal training reasserted itself, and he felt he ought to find his two guests and apologize for startling them so badly. Striding quickly down the passageway into which they had disappeared, he began to look through the castle for them.

(c) 1998
By Liz McKenna
All Rights Reserved
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Biography

Illustration
(c) 2002
By Edward Shuman
All Rights Reserved

Edward Shuman is an art student at the University of Kentucky.